A recurring theme throughout The Memory Tourist has been how much of my life has been defined by listening to KROQ 106.7 in my middle and high school years. Right now it seems unfathomable to be as committed to a radio station as I was during that early 2000s era. Then again, it was a much more boring time for me, where if I wasn’t driving to my next job or school, I was in my room not really doing much of anything. The radio was that comforting tool, which introduced me to so much of the outside world. It shaped my interests so much that even if some of these bands would have airplay on other stations, I doubt that I would like them as much as I currently do.
This means that I have an embarrassing amount of awareness of how many novelty songs that station played. Most famously was the Dynamite Hack cover of Eazy E’s “Boyz N Da Hood,” Flobot’s “Handlebars,” King Missile’s “Detachable Penis,” or Dash Rip Rock’s “Let’s Go Smoke Some Pot” (a half-baked, literally, parody of Danny & The Juniors’ “Let’s Go to the Hop”). I tell you, as much as early 2000s rock has a singular charm to them, it was also a wasteland for so many dumb songs, reflecting the final bits of 1990s nihilism and sarcasm as it finally died away in favor of a more sincere period. I’ll still hear so many songs and have a mix of nostalgia and a fistful of “What was were they thinking?”
And then there’s Liam Lynch.
With exception to Dynamite Hack, I don’t know that KROQ has played a joke song that’s as ubiquitous with that era like “United States of Whatever.” There is so little to the song, clocking in at 86 seconds, that it would be impossible to make a proper deconstruction of it. This is the bastard child of someone who watched too much Beavis and Butt-head, desiring to make the anti-humor with a deadpan style into an anarchic rock song.
The gist of the song is straightforward. After a brief scuzzy guitar bridge, itself giving a whatever vibe, Lynch runs down a scenario that ultimately ends with him saying with all the Southern California flippancy in the world: “Whatever.” This is a song that just doesn’t care about anything, and the scenarios grow more pointless:
So later I'm at the pool hall this girl comes upShe's like "Awww" and I'm like "Whatever"
That’s the song in a nutshell. It’s basically setting up a scenario and responding with so little care that it’s a miracle that Lynch cared to record this song. With that said, you’ll be amazed to know a few things about this song. Up until 2007, it was the shortest song on the U.K. Singles Chart and remains the shortest to reach the Top 10. It has fans that include The Foo Fighters and No Doubt. Despite being a nothing of a song, it manages to capture the careless nature of youth better than any other song from its era. Depending on who you ask, it’s a brilliant satire or, as Lynch would say, whatever.
I suppose it’s best to start with the question: where did Liam Lynch come from? Along with Matt Crocco, he created the surrealist comedy series The Sifl and Olly Show, which aired on MTV between 1997 and 1999. The series had one of those absurdist premises that wouldn’t be out of place right now on [adult swim], finding the sock puppets Sifl and Olly going about their daily lives and interviewing various people. It’s based on Lynch and Crocco’s love of sock puppets that they used to entertain themselves as kids. It wasn’t originally picked up by MTV outside of Europe, but it qualifies as a cult series that existed in the final days before MTV would change their brand and focus on series like Jackass. But hey, at least it entertained Portishead while they were recording their 1997 album.
Among The Sifl and Olly Show’s gags was recording what can be called really dumb songs. Among them was “United States of Whatever,” which was released on the series in 1999. It mixed punk and surf rock while having the characters dismissing various groups of people. It’s a joke on the antisocial nature of these archetypes and works as straightforward jokes. As you can guess, nobody would suspect that it had any longevity. There was so little confidence that the lyrics were improvised. Even the fact that the final verse features a reference to the series character Zafo shows how niche this was supposed to be.
Then things started to heat up. While The Sifl and Olly Show was canceled and relegated to a life of obscurity, tapes of the series began to be passed around. It wasn’t until 2015 that MTV thought to give it an official release. Among the tapes passed around was the song “United States of Whatever.” Lynch likes to joke that most of his most popular work takes several years to become popular. He’s essentially tossing Frisbees in every direction, hoping to find one that doesn’t just fall into the weeds.
After gaining traction on a Britain radio station, it began to have gradual success. Then, by some miracle, it wound up in the hands of somebody at KROQ. They began to play it and suddenly Lynch’s career began to take off again. Let me remind you that this was a song that appeared on the MTV series in 1999. It wasn’t released as a single until 2002. On one hand, it was the perfect representation of a song that was about a lack of care. Even then, the way that it became a phenomenon was wonderfully backwards in nature.
The same can be said from the music video, which has a wonderful lo-fi production that makes The Room (2003) look like a masterpiece in green screen believability. A lot of it is straightforward imagery, finding Lynch interacting with his supporting cast. Some of them are clearly pulled from a grainy video while others just look like cheap extras that he’s acting with. It’s punk rock in its nature, even borrowing fonts and bombastic backgrounds that fill the defiant chorus with this chaotic vision. It’s all a joke and one that clearly was meant to never be taken seriously.
I mean, it was released on an album called “Fake Songs.”
Who expected this song to be more than a gag song on a show defined by manic sock puppets? Lynch sure didn’t. When he was offered the chance to play it live on The Late Show with David Letterman, he had No Doubt’s Adrian Young and Tony Kanal back him up. There was almost zero touring for the song or “Fake Songs,” and his most noteworthy concert moment came when performing the song in an encore with The Foo Fighters. This wasn’t going to be a permanent gig, and everyone knew it. That may ultimately be what’s so fun about it.
There were two additional versions of the song that would appear in the year to come. There was an extended cut that clocked in closer to two minutes. There was also a “Bush Remix” that tackled things from the George W. Bush administration that he thought was “whatever,” including Iraq War, Vladimir Putin, Osama bin Laden, and Kim Jong-il. For a one-joke song, he really got admirable mileage out of its premise. The same can’t be said for other U.K. Singles that have since done more in shorter times, including Hans Zimmer’s “Spider Pig” and Jonny Trunk and Wisbey’s “The Ladies’ Bras.” The fact that Lynch has outranked a genius like Zimmer in this one field deserves some commemoration.
How did it impact “Fake Songs”? On one hand, it was Lynch’s most high profile album in his entire career. Much like the song, there is an earlier version of the album released in 2000 released independently by 111 Productions. The 2002 version was released by S-Curve and was more noteworthy for featuring a bonus DVD with two hours of skits and shorts. While there were other songs on the album, you can look at the tracklist and understand the gag clearly. Among the artists that he lists doing “fake songs” of are: Björk, David Bowie, The Pixies, Depeche Mode, and The Talking Heads. As you can guess, these were supposed to be seen more like bits and totally explains why the reviews range from The Guardian giving it a 4 out of 5 while Stylus Magazine gave it an F. You either got the joke or not. With that said, there was no better joke than understanding how he got Ringo Starr (yes, him) to play drums on the album.
There would be another single, “Still Wasted from the Party Last Night,” but despite some airplay it failed to have any resonance on par with “United States of Whatever.” Not that Lynch actually cares.
I’m being serious. While Lynch has yet to have any legacy as a musician on par with this, he has had an incredible career in the world of comedy. Along with writing the theme song for Clone High, he has collaborated with comedians like Tenacious D, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and Sarah Silverman. He’s even directed music videos for groups like Queens of the Stone Age and has songs that have appeared on the School of Rock (2003) soundtrack.
So as you can guess, Lynch will be just fine in the long run. He has stayed busy collaborating with various artists over the years and if anything the success of this song helped to give him that opportunity. In recent years he has started his own podcast Lynchland that includes the return of his beloved characters from The Sifl and Olly Show. He also has continued to release music, including the recent “Be an Owl” on 111 Productions.
Even if I never personally followed his career closely, Lynch has been a figure that has always felt like he was there in my life. I don’t know when the last time that KROQ played “United States of Whatever,” but then again I don’t know why they’d play it now. It’s such an artifact from another time and one that barely made sense then. You can’t look too closely at this song and expect to have a clear answer. The joke is that we’re all dumb and take important things for granted. That’s it.
Before writing this, I hadn’t heard the song for years, and I still can recall how it sounds. It was this manic creature rattling around in a cage. You would pass it on the black market and feel confused about why you saw it. Why does it exist? Who could possibly pull any joy out of listening to this song? Well, I’m asking myself the same thing when I listen to it. The only difference is that instead of trying to answer the “Why?” I give into the ultimate dissatisfaction that Lynch wants and say “Whatever.” It’s okay not to care sometimes.
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